CHALLENGES TO UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE PROGRAMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

Abstract The University of South Florida has more than 50,000 students. The School of Aging Studies first offered an MA in Gerontology in 1967. We currently offer many undergraduate General Education courses, two undergraduate majors, online graduate certificate and master’s programs, and a PhD in Aging Studies. Accountability and addressing university metrics and priorities have become an increasing requirement at USF and elsewhere. We have had great success in our General Education courses, consistently reaching over 5,000 students per year and producing high Student Credit Hour (SCH) numbers, an important metric. Recently, our programs experienced challenges with increased class sizes resulting from higher demand for our general education courses. In several cases, the number of course sections offered and the number of seats in each had doubled. Meeting these demands placed a strain on faculty, instructors, and graduate student assistants. We also face challenges as our university funding formula increasingly focuses on undergraduate major enrollment, and therefore we are focusing on innovative methods to recruit more students at the undergraduate, master’s, and PhD level. In this presentation, we will describe some of the strategies that have maximized our successes, and efforts to address challenges in sustaining larger numbers of degree seeking students in our programs. We will include data on SCH, grant funding, publications, citations, and program graduates per year which help us monitor our successes and areas needing improvement.

Francisco, California, United States,6. Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research,Portland,Oregon,United Sta tes Visual impairments and ocular diseases are emerging potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia, however, causal relationships are poorly understood and vision impairment may also impact dementia evaluations.Few studies have examined associations of multiple measures of visual impairments with markers of neurodegeneration.We investigated associations of visual acuity and history of ocular diseases with dementia and brain MRI outcomes.UK Biobank participants aged 40-70 without dementia at assessment (n=496,938) self-reported history of cataract, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration Subsets had visual acuity exams and refractive error measured by autorefractor (n=117,163) and brain MRIs (n=33,923).In cox proportional-hazard models adjusted for demographics and other health conditions, history of cataracts was associated with higher risk of all-cause dementia (HR:1.19:95%CI: 1.09-1.31)but other eye conditions were not associated.History of cataract was associated with significantly smaller total gray matter volume (β=-2483 mm3, 95% CI: -4225 to -741) but not an AD brain signature based on cortical thickness.Worse than 20/40 visual acuity was associated with dementia (HR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.11-1.77)but myopia defined based on refractive error was not, and neither were associated with total or regional volumes on brain MRI.History of cataract and binary 20/40 vision are associated with dementia risk.Our results suggest that cataract, but not myopia, may increase risk of neurodegeneration independent of typical AD, but more investigation is needed.

HOW GERONTOLOGY PROGRAMS ARE MEETING CHALLENGES IN HIGHER EDUCATION Chair: Mary Ann Erickson
Population aging means that gerontology education is increasingly relevant for all students, yet trends in higher education create existential challenges for many gerontology programs, who may not attract robust number of applicants or majors.In this symposium, educators from five different gerontology programs will share their programs' particular challenges as well as a wide variety of strategies they have used to meet these challenges.The first presentation will show how recent losses at Ithaca College, including the Aging Studies major and independent department status, also come with opportunities for collaboration with health science and public health programs.The second presentation will describe the University of North Carolina at Wilmington's approach of combining undergraduate and graduate programs to attract and retain students after being placed on a "lowproductivity list" in the not-too-distant past.The third presentation will share how a new Occupational Endorsement Certificate at the University of Alaska Anchorage took the place of the deactivated gerontology minor.Colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Boston will describe their efforts to enhance diversity and grow program enrollment across undergraduate and graduate programs.Finally, the fifth presentation will describe how increased demand for general education courses as well as funding dependent on undergraduate major enrollment created challenges at the University of South Florida.This is a Directors of Aging Centers Interest Group Sponsored Symposium.Ithaca College is a private comprehensive college of about 6,000 students in upstate New York.Its Gerontology Institute (ICGI) was formed in 1992, with a major and a minor in Aging Studies added in 2001.Despite a high profile in the local community and in the field of gerontology, program evaluation consistently revealed important challenges including trouble promoting a gerontology major to high school seniors (especially important at a tuition-dependent school like Ithaca College) and credit-heavy health professions programs where advisors were reluctant to have students add a minor or double major.Institutional forces accelerated by the pandemic led to retrenchment in 2021, including the loss of the major as well as the ICGI being folded into a department of health sciences and public health.In this presentation, we share both details of past challenges as well as the ways in which we are moving forward with a more collaborative model focused on connections within the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance.

CHALLENGES TO UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE PROGRAMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
Debra Dobbs, William Haley, and Nasreen Sadeq, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States The University of South Florida has more than 50,000 students.The School of Aging Studies first offered an MA in Gerontology in 1967.We currently offer many undergraduate General Education courses, two undergraduate majors, online graduate certificate and master's programs, and a PhD in Aging Studies.Accountability and addressing university metrics and priorities have become an increasing requirement at USF and elsewhere.We have had great success in our General Education courses, consistently reaching over 5,000 students per year and producing high Student Credit Hour (SCH) numbers, an important metric.Recently, our programs experienced challenges with increased class sizes resulting from higher demand for our general education courses.In several cases, the number of course sections offered and the number of seats in each had doubled.Meeting these demands placed a strain on faculty, instructors, and graduate student assistants.We also face challenges as our university funding formula increasingly focuses on undergraduate major enrollment, and therefore we are focusing on innovative methods to recruit more students at the undergraduate, master's, and PhD level.In this presentation, we will describe some of the strategies that have maximized our successes, and efforts to address challenges in sustaining larger numbers of degree seeking students in our programs.We will include data on SCH, grant funding, publications, citations, and program graduates per year which help us monitor our successes and areas needing improvement.

DIVERSIFYING THE PIPELINE OF GERONTOLOGISTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON
Edward Miller, Jeffrey E. Stokes, Pamela Nadash, Kathrin Boerner, and ellen Birchander, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, United States The University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston is a public research university serving approximately 16,000 students.It is the most diverse university in New England and third most diverse university in the nation.UMass Boston prioritizes fostering an anti-racist and health-promoting institutional culture.Consistent with this priority, the Gerontology Department is committed to growing the size and diversity of the professional pipeline in aging services, policy, practice, and research.This presentation describes the multi-pronged approach taken to achieve this objective, while identifying associated facilitators and challenges.Department-wide initiatives include prioritizing work in disparities and a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in faculty hiring and implementing curriculum self-assessment and climate survey tools.Doctoral program initiatives include establishing a scholarship in Social Justice and Aging and submitting a training grant application in Health Equity Research.Undergraduate program initiatives include changing the name of the major to "Aging Studies" to make the content clearer and more accessible, proposing a minor in Aging Studies to make it possible for students from across the University to earn a valuable credential, having all courses meet Social and Behavioral requirements in general education (including, in select cases, the Diversity requirement as well), and expanding the number and attractiveness of course offerings (including "Diversity and Aging").The Department is also implementing an initiative where undergraduates receive paid internships at local-area aging agencies with potential for continued employment postgraduation.Enhancing diversity goes hand-in-hand with growing program enrollment with positive benefits for older adults and their families, caregivers, and communities.

AGE-INCLUSIVE STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE LEARNING AND WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS IN U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION
Chair: Nina Silverstein Co-Chair: Lauren Bowen Discussant: Marla Berg-Weger This symposium reports on recent research to develop informed strategies to expand age-friendly campus practices related to institutional functions our previous study identified as areas of high-need and broad-impact within an age-friendly campus environment: Teaching and Learning, Personnel, and Student Affairs.The current research aimed to identify barriers and opportunities for age inclusivity as experienced by older campus members (faculty, staff, and students); identify challenges and strategies for implementing age-friendly campus practices; and recommend practical strategies to expand and enhance age-friendly practices.To this end, we drew on data collected from several sources: open-ended responses to the Age-Friendly Inventory and